Chris Matthews Channels Sean Spicer, Claims Hitler Didn’t Use Chemical Weapons

MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews seems to be defending Sean Spicer for claiming that Hitler never used chemical weapons, perhaps because he made the same gaffe in August 2013.

After trying to justify the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian airbase, Spicer, the White House press secretary, apologized multiple times following the outrage and scorn that occurred after he claimed in a Tuesday news conference that Hitler refrained deploying such weapons in World War II.

As history has recorded, Hitler killed millions of Jews with poison gas in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Spicer’s remarks were even more egregious in that they came this week while the Jewish community celebrates Passover, as Spicer himself acknowledged.

“Unfortunately for MSNBC’s Chris Matthews,” Spicer’s apology tour “led to people remembering he’d said said [sic] the exact same thing back in 2013,” the Daily Caller noted.

Perhaps for this reason, Matthews, an aggressive Trump critic, defended Spicer on his Hardball program on Tuesday night, the Washington Times reported.

“What do you make of this Spicer — well, I’ll call it a faux pas — because I think he was thinking, you know, I remember growing up hearing from my father and others that, you know, in World War I the gas was used. I remember all the horrible pictures coming out of World War I from battlefield use of gas and the gas masks and what it did to people. And even when Hitler, the worst person ever perhaps, was surrounded, they didn’t resort to that in the battlefield. I think that’s what clearly — that’s what I think Spicer was talking about.”

Back in August 2013, as the Inquisitr reported at the time, Chris Matthews also made the Hitler comparison (without the battlefield reference) in connection with Syria and Obama’s inaction to respond to a poison gas attack by Syrian President Assad and his forces.

“If you basically put down a red line and say don’t use chemical weapons, and it’s been enforced in the Western community, around the world — international community — for decades. Don’t use chemical weapons. We didn’t use them in World War II, Hitler didn’t use them, we don’t use chemical weapons; that’s no deal…”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI71acBSyYU

There was relatively little outrage at the time over Matthews’ remarks.

Many will recall that Matthews, who has a history of erratic on-air statements, admitted on TV that Barack Obama’s speechmaking gave him a thrill up his leg. The longtime Democrat, 71, was a former speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and chief of staff to House Speaker Tip O’Neill before going into journalism.

Perhaps Spicer forgot that some government officials also compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler in the run-up to the Iraq War, although WMDs were never located in that country after the U.S. deployment. Spicer’s boss President Donald Trump has consistently described the Iraq War and its aftermath that led to the rise of ISIS as a disaster that has destabilized the Middle East.

In another ill-advised statement, Chris Matthews described President Trump’s January 20 inaugural address as “Hitlerian,” the Washington Examiner and other news outlets reported at the time.

The MSNBC host also theorized that the Syria airstrike might be a way for Trump to “kill the narrative that he’s in bed with Putin.”

Chris Matthews speculates Trump strike is a "set piece" to "kill the narrative that he's in bed with Putin." #SyriaAirstrike pic.twitter.com/K5hvF66dD7

— Tommy moderna-vaX-Topher (@tommyxtopher) April 7, 2017

Matthews also recently compared the Trump family to Saddam Hussein’s family or the Romanovs, the Russian royal family who were overthrown and then killed by the communists, PJ Media detailed.

Author Ann Coulter is one Trump backer who was surprised and dismayed that the president who ran on an American First platform would launch an airstrike against the Syrian government and thereby intervene in a civil war between a brutal dictatorship and equally brutal ISIS-backed rebels. In a series of tweets in late summer 2013, Trump warned against bombing Syria after the aforementioned chemical weapons attack, Coulter recalled in a column published yesterday.

Coulter also claimed that when the U.S. helped topple a third-world dictator in countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya, or Egypt, history has shown that the replacement turned out to be far worse.

[Featured Image by Matt Rourke/AP Images]